Pear Ice Cream

First off, if you make this ice cream, don't be surprised that it doesn't taste anything like the one from the supermarket. In a sense, this doesn't taste like pear ice cream, it tastes of pears. In addition, it has a nice hit of vanilla which goes nicely with the pears.

Pear ice cream is something that I loved as a child, but it's been a long time since I had it, so there's a fair bit of nostalgia here for me, but I have to say that this is, by far, the best pear ice cream that I have ever eaten.

I used a recipe from Dansukker (in Swedish), with a couple of modification of my own. It's the first time that I've used an ice cream recipe with glucose syrup in it, and it makes quite a bit of difference. The glucose doesn't really affect the taste, but it seems that it keeps the ice cream from freezing solid, the way home made ice cream tends to do. This ice cream was soft enough to eat straight away after a night in the freezer.

I increased the amounts in the original recipe by 50%, so this is quite a lot, I had to churn it in 2 batches.

Pear ice cream with vanilla

Ingredients
1120 g pears (approximately)
6 egg yolks
1 ½ dl sugar
3 dl milk
2,25 dl whipping cream
1 ½ dl glucose syrup
1 vanilla pod
Greed food coloring (optional)

To cook the pears in:
6 dl water
4 ½ dl sugar
1 ½ dl lemon juice

Ingredients

Place the water, sugar and lemon juice to cook the pears in into a pot and bring it to the boil. Let it boil (not too high) for a couple of minutes.

In the meantime, peal, halve, and core the pears. Place the pears into the syrup and cook until soft (15-20 minutes). Let the pears cool in the cooking-syrup, then blend to a smooth puré.

Split the vanilla pod down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Put the milk, cream, glucose syrup, vanilla seeds and vanilla pod into a pot and bring it to the boil while stirring. Let it sit for 20 minutes to infuse. Remove the vanilla pod.

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until white. Pour the infused milk/cream into the egg yolks and sugar while whisking vigorously, then return to the pot. Heat until the foam on to disappears and the custard starts to thicken (80°C if you're using a thermometer). Pour into a clean bowl, through a fine mesh sieve, and leave top cool.

Add the pear puré and, optionally, a few drops of green food coloring, into the custard, and whisk until combined. Churn into delicious ice cream.

The stars of the dish

The stars of the dish, cooked

Infusing

eggs+sugar

Uncooked custard

Aaand, done